Louis-Cesare and his opponent both looked at the clock; then the mage decided on the better part of valor and bolted for the door. I didn’t try to stop him; I was too busy following hard on his heels. Louis-Cesare trailed after me, dragging the limp body of the cabin attendant with him, and the three of us ran full out for the chain-link fence near the runway. The mage, unencumbered by bodies, reached it first and vaulted over. Louis-Cesare dropped the steward and sailed after him, jumping across the eight-foot fence like it wasn’t even there.
I dropped the captain beside his coworker just as the plane exploded in an eruption of orange flame and black smoke. Several white-hot bits of metal collided with my back after I moved to shield the captain. I was reaching for the steward when a flying piece of silver sliced through his forehead, scalping him before embedding itself in the fence post behind his head. I huddled over the captain’s still-breathing body and waited it out. Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.
Half an hour later, we were in a shiny new Mustang heading for Vegas. It had been chosen because of the heavy UV coating on the windows, but it also came equipped with a manual transmission. I had stared at it doubtfully after we located it in the rental office’s vast lot.
“You should have let me steal something. I don’t drive a stick.”
“I’m driving,” Louis-Cesare said, sliding into the low seat as easily as if he’d done it a hundred times. “You’re drunk.”
I wished. “I had all of two beers, mostly for the water content.”
“If you needed water, why didn’t you drink water?”
“I don’t like water.”
“Get in or stay here, Dorina.”
I got in. I wanted to be there when he told the Senate that we’d destroyed a million-dollar aircraft in less than a day. I rode shotgun, while our two passengers took up the backseat. One was the captain, who had gone to sleep after a little suggestion from Louis-Cesare; the other was the only dark mage, other than Jonathan, to have survived the explosion. If you want to call it that.
Louis-Cesare had insisted on bringing him along, but the guy was giving me the willies. The foot growing out of the side of his neck and the fact that he now literally had eyes in the back of his head probably had something to do with that. After five minutes of hearing him scream, I’d had enough and knocked him unconscious.
“So, who’s Jonathan?” I asked, fiddling with the air vents to get them as wide open as possible. The sun was so hot I could taste it, and the road shimmered in front of us like an undulating black snake. It was the kind of heat that made newspaper headlines and started people making dire predictions about global warming. I had brought the rest of the six-pack along, but like me, the bottle in my hand was already sweating heavily.
The only answer I got was a slight increase in speed. “If we are going to work together, we should know something about each other,” I quoted piously.
“The mage is not important.”
“You risked your life to try to kill him and he’s not important?”
I received only stony silence for an answer. Louis-Cesare’s eyes were on the road, but I could see them clearly in the mirror. They were perfect receptors, showing every reaction in those vivid irises. His expression was blank, the planes of his face like those of a statue, cold and unyielding. But when he thought about Jonathan, his eyes were haunted.
“I said, you risked your—”
“It is not your concern.”
“Really? Because that’s not how it looks to me. There was no reason for the Black Circle to hit that airplane. Yeah, it belongs to the Senate and yeah, there’s a war on. But they didn’t just attack it and leave. They waited for us to come back. They waited.”
“We already knew we have a traitor.”
“Yes, but now we know—” I was interrupted by a gasp of agonized sound from the mage in the back. Considering his current state, I didn’t think pummeling him into silence all the way to MAGIC was a good idea, not if anyone wanted to question him later. I found a knockout dart in my backpack and ensured that he stayed unconscious for the duration of the ride.
I turned back to find Louis-Cesare’s eyes on me. “Now we know something else, too,” I continued. “We have to conclude that Drac is working with the Black Circle, unless you think we have two leaks, one informing Uncle of our whereabouts and the other giving the same information to the mages. Personally, I find that a little hard to swallow.”
“It is not impossible,” Louis-Cesare said stubbornly. “There have been cases recently where vampires, some sworn to first-level masters, have managed to break their allegiance. A few even attempted to kill their own sire.”
My beer had left a ring of condensation on the knee of my jeans. I rubbed at it and tried to digest this new bombshell. “Why haven’t I heard about this?”